Investigating the Integration of Listening and Speaking Skills in English Licence Classes at the Department of English Language- University of Ghardaia

DOI:https://doi.org/10.65613/736783

Dr. Malika Kouti

University of Ghardaia, Algeria

Email: kouti.malika@gmail.com kouti.malika@univ-ghardaia.edu.dz

Received : 26/01/2026 ;  Accepted : 28/04/2026

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether listening and speaking skills are integrated in English Licence classes. The motive behind researching this topic is the poor oral performance among many students. To achieve the objective of the study, four teachers in the Department of English Language at University of Ghardaia were interviewed through semi-structured interviews, and a qualitative analysis approach was adopted. Eight open-ended questions were included in the interview. These questions were about the objective of the oral expression syllabus, the integration of listening and speaking, the types of tasks, the use of teaching media, the implementation of technological tools, etc.. The obtained findings revealed that the teachers are unaware of the importance of integrating listening and speaking. The findings confirmed the hypothesis that the poor oral performance is due to the lack of integration of listening and speaking. Finally, some recommendations were suggested.

Keywords: listening, speaking, skills integration, oral performance

Introduction

     The primary aim to teach a language is to enable learners to how to use it appropriately. This aim cannot be achieved without careful planning and ongoing practice. Students enrolled in English speciality at any Algerian university have the module of Oral Expression as one of the main modules during the Licence studies. In the oral sessions, students learn how to express themselves appropriately. To this end, the teachers’ job is to equip the students with all the tools that help them foster their speaking skill and through putting them in situations similar to the ones used in real life in English speaking countries. In the following, we shall focus on the importance of importance of integrating listening and speaking skills in enhancing their oral performance and developing their communicative competence.

Significance of the study

     This study is crucial to both teachers and students of English as it reveals how oral expression sessions are taught. The obtained findings will help teachers understand where the problems may lie and what solutions can be suggested to solve this problem.

Research Question

Are Oral Expression teachers aware of the importance of integrating listening and speaking skills?

Hypothesis

Teachers may not be aware of the importance of the integration of listening and speaking skills.

Literature Review

Segregated (Isolated Skills) Versus Integrated Skills

     In the traditional approaches, the four language skills, listening, speaking, reading, and writing were taught in isolation. This approach proved unsuccessful, for it did not yield good outcomes; language learners were unable to communicate appropriately mainly in speaking and writing. The traditional grammar approach is an example of these approaches which focused on the written form and neglected oral expression. The structuralist approach, too, on the contrary, focused on the spoken form and neglected the written form. The two approaches did not meet the teaching and learners’ expectations as they restricted language learning to a very limited, non-communicative set of tasks that failed to provide students to develop their ability to communicate effectively in everyday situations.

     This approach was considered and called the segregated-skill approach or language-based approach (Oxford, 2001). This segregation that reflected in traditional EFL language programmes contradicted with natural processes of first language acquisition. Consequently, the segregated-skill approach outcomes were the motive towards the shift towards the communicative approach.

     In the 1970s, linguists claimed that in order to be a competent user of language, learners must practice the four language skills simultaneously. Widdowson (1978) was one of the first linguists who called for skills integration in language teaching to reflect how communication functions in real social life contexts. Widdowson (1998) stated clearly: “We can talk of skills in respect to usage/grammar, but if we talk about language use/communication, we need a different concept, and perhaps a different term” (p. 325). It appears that the aim behind this new orientation was to enable learners to raise their language proficiency and develop their communicative competence.

Integrating Listening and Speaking

     The main goal behind teaching a language is to enable learners to use it for communication. This goal can be achieved through continuous practice inside and outside the classroom. To this end, the module of oral expression in any Algerian department of English has as its aim developing the students’ communicative competence, and to achieve this aim, the oral expression syllabus has been adapted to meet this purpose. Thus, the syllabus designers have added the listening skill; that is, they have integrated listening and speaking to enable the students to improve and develop their oral communication skills.

     In oral sessions, students listen and speak. They learn to listen and how to respond to listening; that is, how to express themselves appropriately and effectively. To this end, the teachers’ job is to equip the students with all the tools that help them foster and integrate the listening and speaking skills through various tasks, situations and strategies

Listening Skill

     Listening, in language teaching, is a complex process that enables learners to comprehend spoken language. Listening is used with the speaking, reading and writing skills. Listening is an important skill in second language acquisition, and it is the channel through which we process language in real time using pacing, encoding and pausing units that only concern spoken language (Rost, 2001). However, listening as a skill has been neglected and overlooked.

     Listening is also a goal-oriented activity that entails bottom-up and top-down processing (Hedge, 2000; Rost, 2001; Saville-Troike, 2006). Some English Language Teaching (ELT) methods have maintained that listening ability develops automatically when learners are exposed to language through practising grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. Despite the fact that the audiolingual method, for example, is based on listening, speaking then reading and writing, it provided little practice through scripted dialogues which aimed to present and practise language forms.

     In sum, listening is important for successful communication, for it provides the aural input that serves as the basis for language acquisition and fosters spoken communication (Dang et al., 2021). Brown and Yule (1983) claimed that language serves two main functions: transactional and interactional. The transactional function involves the communication of information, while the interactional function serves to establish and maintain social relationships (Kouti, 2023).

Speaking Skill

     Speaking is one of the main language productive skills that should be given much importance in EFL classes; through speaking, students can produce utterances/sentences, participate in conversations and discussions, and the like (Kouti, 2023). Nunan (1993) stated that the “ability to produce discourse that extends beyond a limited number of utterances, and in which information is conveyed clearly, needs to be consciously learned. It can also benefit from explicit teaching, and should therefore form part of the school curriculum” (Cited in Kouti, ibid). Two main aspects of speaking are accuracy and fluency. Accuracy has to do with the ability to speak using correct grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and intonation, whereas fluency is related to the ability of the speaker to produce a flow of speech spontaneously without hesitations (Kouti, ibid). However, Bygate (1987) stated that speaking is an undervalued skill because all people speak. He defined speaking as a popular form of expression which uses colloquial register; it is transient and improvised.

     Bygate (ibid) stated that speaking:

 is the skill by which they are most frequently judged, and through which they make or lose friends. It is the vehicle par excellence of social solidarity, of social ranking, of professional advancement and business. It is also a medium through which much language is learnt, and which for many is particularly (p. vii).

   This shows that the speaking skill is very important and requires planning, practice and involvement to be developed.

     Nunan (1999) related success in language learning to the ability of students to build conversations in the target language. Celce-Murcia and Olshtain (2000) maintained that any misunderstanding in oral communication results from problems such as the speaker’s lack of mastery of the target language or lack of shared knowledge between speakers and hearers, or violation of sociocultural rules of appropriacy due to a pragmatic transfer from L1 (Kouti, ibid).

Benefits of Integrated Listening and Speaking Instruction

     There are many benefits of integrating listening and speaking skills. Some of them include:

• Strengthened Language Proficiency

     Research demonstrated that integrating listening and speaking strengthens the learner’s language proficiency (Mart, 2020). The research revealed that the groups which received integrated listening-speaking instruction significantly outperformed those who received only speaking-focused lessons. Moreover, the group who were exposed to both top-down and bottom-up listening processes combined with speaking activities produced the highest number of accurate responses (81% accuracy) compared to 68% for the listening-focused group and 54% for the speaking-only group.

• Grammar and Vocabulary Acquisition

     Research demonstrated that when learners learn new lexical items through listening and then use them in speaking tasks, retention improves significantly. For example, a research conducted by Gómez et al. (2025) showed that listening to English songs allowed students to get more vocabulary, learn idiomatic phrases and get used to the rhythm and intonation of the language.

• Metacognitive Awareness

     Integrated listening-speaking instruction develops learners’ metacognitive awareness; that is, their ability to plan, monitor and evaluate their own learning. Through pre-listening, during-listening and post-listening activities, students become more conscious of their learning processes. Goh (2008) found that teaching and raising metacognition awareness help students become more motivated and impacts positively their listening performance, which enhances their speaking confidence.

• Affective Filter Reduced

     Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis suggests that emotional factors like anxiety and motivation significantly influence language acquisition. Integrated activities that combine listening with speaking in low-stakes, engaging contexts help reduce the affective filter. The study by Gómez et al. (2025) found that 62.5% of students rated music-based listening activities as “very effective,” and 68.75% described them as “very fun,” creating a relaxed environment conducive to learning.

• Oral Expression Module

      The Oral Expression module for first year Licence has as its main objectives the following:

• improving the students’ speaking skill in communicative English situations
• training students to recognise sounds in English speech
• enabling students to speak English in various real-life situations and understanding spoken English on TV and in other situations.

     This module combines both “oral expression” and “listening comprehension”, and the topics are as follows:

1. Oral Expression
2. Introducing yourself and others
3. Discussing reasons for choosing English as an option
4. Expressing ideas and opinions clearly
5. Using proper forms of language to perform social functions in various contexts
6. Formal discussions (Meetings, job interview, etc.)
7. Describing and comparing people, places, things and habits

2. Listening Comprehension

– Listening to identify main ideas and important details of spoken texts (dialogue, monologue, conversation, etc.)

– Listening to understand the speaker’s purpose and attitude

– Listening for intonation

– Listening for making predictions, inferences and generalizations

– Listening for appropriate uses of collocations and idiomatic expressions

– Listening for topics

– Listening for personal opinions

Research Methods

Procedures

     In this study, a case study research design was employed to obtain insights from the respondents. According to Brown and Rogers (2002), a case study is one of the main ways that allow and enable researchers to gain insight in language learning settings. It is able to provide an in-depth analysis of a specific topic, offer deep and contextual understanding of complex issues, bridging theory with real-world practice by strengthening critical thinking, problem-solving, and analytical skills in students. A case study allows researchers to explore unique phenomena and generate new insights through qualitative data from authentic scenarios.

Data Collection Instrument

     In this study a structured-interview was used to collect data from four part-time teachers (T1, T2, T3 and T4). Interviews are important sources of information. The questions were open-ended ones and carefully worded. The findings were analysed qualitatively.

Data Analysis Technique

Analysis of data provided facts that enabled the interpretation of the results and also helped to reach conclusions from the findings of the study. Data collected using semi-structured interviews enable the research to obtain direct information from the respondents.

1. Data Analysis

     A qualitative analysis was selected to suit this study, and the aim was to investigate whether teachers integrate the listening and speaking skills in the Oral Expression sessions in order to foster the students’ oral performance. The researcher asked six main questions, and the answers were as follows:

         Question 1: What is the objective of an oral expression module in Licence?

    All the respondents answered that the objective is to develop the students’ speaking skill.

Question 2: What is the aim of having the official syllabus?

     All the teachers mentioned that the aim is to apply and follow the syllabus.

   Question 3: What approach are you adopting in teaching Oral Expression module?

     All the teachers did not provide a clear answer concerning the approach used for teaching oral expression.

     Question 4: What are the types of tasks you are using in the lessons?

     Three teachers (T1, T2 and T3) mentioned various speaking activities such as acting out dialogues, role plays, oral presentations, etc., and one them (T4) said that they include besides speaking activities, some listening activities such as ‘Listen and repeat’, ‘Listen and answer’, ‘Listen and complete’, ‘dialogues’, ‘role plays’, ‘monologues’, ‘topic discussion’ and so on.

     Question 5: Why do not you include listening tasks as well?

     Two of the teachers (T1 and T2) reported that students get bored quickly when exposed to a listening script. Another teacher (T3) mentioned that they would like to, but the lack of equipment is the direct cause of not implementing. The fourth teacher (T4) reported that they do include listening activities as stated in the official syllabus.

Question 6: How do you integrate listening and speaking?

     One teacher (T4) mentioned that the integration is done through a listening task followed by answering questions and discussions. The other teachers repeated the answers in Q 5.

    Question 7: How can teachers develop the speaking skill if the students do not listen to the English language, taking into account that they have two sessions per week?

     The teachers repeated the previous justifications: the boredom of students and the lack of equipment.

    Question 8: How do you evaluate your students’ oral performance?

     Teachers (T1, T2 and T3) reported that their students are progressing and they are satisfied, while T4 confirmed that their students are excelling, and they are satisfied with their progress.

1. Discussion of the Findings

     Following the analysis, all teachers reported that the objective of the official syllabus is to develop the students’ speaking skill; however, the following questions reveal that only one teacher (T4) who is aware of the objective of the syllabus which is the integration of listening and speaking for the purpose of developing the students’ speaking skill, oral performance, … It appears that the other teachers (T1, T2 and T3) lack the importance of adopting an approach for teaching a language. We could say that they are not aware of the fact that any language course must be based on an approach. Moreover, they are not aware of the fact that listening and speaking are interrelated, and that speakers and listeners/hearers exchange turns. Besides, students need to listen to native speakers and different types of topics and materials. More importantly, the findings demonstrate that the teachers mainly T1, T2 andT3 have not read the syllabus carefully and/or the do not use it at all. This is also reflected in the types of activities used during the oral sessions as three teachers focus on only speaking, while only one T4 who integrate listening and speaking. The students’ boredom that was mentioned by teachers T1 and T2 also indicates that those teachers lack awareness and expertise, and it shows that they ignore the importance of motivation and creativity in English language teaching. the lack of equipment as reported in the answers also reveals that those teachers do not devote some time to planning their lessons, and it should be noted that the teaching media are available in the department and requires that teachers should consult the administration for projectors, for example, prior the lessons.

     Finally, the hypothesis set at the beginning “Teachers may not be aware of the importance of the integration of listening and speaking skills” was confirmed.

Conclusion

     Integrating listening and speaking has a great impact on the students’ oral performance and enhances their communicative competence. To this end, teachers are required to read the official syllabus attentively and stick to the stated objective. The syllabus includes the components of both listening and speaking. It begins with listening, first, which indicates clearly that students need to listen to the English language then speak it. Besides, it includes a variety of topics that enable the students to widen their knowledge about many aspects of life and learn and acquire many expressions, etc. Part-time teachers, mainly the ones who lack teaching experience, need to be guided and to be in contact with their permanent colleagues for any questions or advice. To conclude, teachers should be more aware of the importance of integrating listening and speaking in the Oral Expression sessions for developing oral performance and communicative competence

Recommendations

• Integrating listening and speaking skills is one means to foster the students’ communicative competence.
• Encouraging, motivating and engaging all students in listening and speaking tasks.
• Part-time teachers must contact the permanent ones in order to guide them and help them achieve the objective of the syllabus which is the development and improvement of students’ oral performance.
• Part-time teachers must devote some time in planning their lessons based on the official syllabus.

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